On Saturday, April 13, 2024, Greater Brunswick Charter School will host its 25th Anniversary Gala Fundraiser. We are asking for your help to make this fundraiser a success. Our goal is to raise money to support enrichment and intervention programs at GBCS, including Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math, also known as STEAM.

GBCS is a free, independent public school. Developed by parents and educators in 1998, the school now serves almost 400 children in grades K through 8. We are proud of our school, rooted in community, equity, personalized learning, and restorative justice; blooming into a comprehensive dual language and cultural program.

We rely on fundraising and grants to expand and improve our programs. Recent funding has allowed us to transform our After School Academy (ASA) from a parent paid program with 50 students in 2020 to a free program with over 200 students in 2024. Providing a free ASA program makes it accessible to our families and also gives us the opportunity to offer more enrichment and intervention programs, impacting student learning. We need your support to offer high quality Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math programs.

Our Keynote Speaker is Mayida Zaal, Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning at Montclair State University and one of the GBCS Founding Teachers. She serves as Co-Director for the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy, a grow-your-own partnership with the Newark Board of Education and the American Federation of Teachers.

Dr. Zaal began her career as an educator in New Brunswick, NJ where she led a volunteer program for the Douglass Women in Math, Science, and Engineering at Rutgers University. She went on to teach middle school math and science at Lord Stirling School and was one of the founding teachers of the Greater Brunswick Charter School. After leaving New Brunswick, she served as the Director of Curriculum for the American International School of Abuja in Nigeria. Informed by her immigrant experience growing up multilingual and multicultural, and her professional experiences as an educator and researcher, Dr. Zaal’s research aims to identify factors that help recruit and retain racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teachers in the profession. She is particularly interested in what communities can do to encourage and support teachers to thrive. She is the founder of a critical participatory action research collective - Reclaiming ME: Muslim Educators. The collective is conducting the first national study of Muslim American teachers in K-12 schools. Dr. Zaal has been awarded $500,000 from the Spencer Foundation to fund this study.